Welcome to the pilot episode of The Hilary Podcast, where we take a step back behind now well groomed founders and discuss their private companies and projects to shed some learning that you can apply it to your business. Today I'm Brandon Hondo, and on this episode I'm very excited to be joined by Eric Panels, who is the founder and chief Beers man and Beer Brand, a company that sells products from beard, oil shampoo and fragrances to redefine men's grooming private beer brand. Eric was also the founder of BALCO Mo. An e commerce store that sold vinyl graphics that he designed, along with the tangible lessons that Eric learned while running with Cuomo, as well as the day to day of running Beard brand. In this episode, Eric and I discuss finding success in a market with low barriers to entry, how powerful read it and other social media strategies can be in gaining and retaining customers and the potential success of a fake I. D company. Sit tight, get a notebook ready and thank you for listening.

This podcast wouldn't be possible without the help of our friends over at referral Hero, the all in one platform could design and run flexible referral programs that grow your bottom line. If you're tired of wasting money on Facebook ads or writing tons of content that never rank on Google but already have loyal customers, you should definitely try a referral program. The Dollar Flight Club grew its business by 13% and holiday pirates added 300,000 emails in less than a month after setting up their referral programs. The best thing about all of this is that you can get started in minutes with their no code widgets, and if you sign up today, you can get 20% off with the code fail ary to zero. Try it now for 14 days without any cost at referral. Hero dot com Once again, that's a referral hero dot com. Hello, Hello, Welcome to You. The first episode of The Failure podcast with your host Brandon Handle Echo. This is a podcast covering on the prison ship founders and really just becoming a resource bank for founders to learn from other failed founders and,

you know, getting them to be public about like insights about that they have and publicizing nuggets of wisdom about their failed businesses. Today we have the ultimate pleasure of hearing Eric Bana ls today Who is the founder of beauty brands? Hillary, What's going on? Brandon, man.

Happy to break your podcast. Virginity.

Thank you for being here. Happy new tea. Yeah. Happy New Year as well. Okay, so I'm just gonna get started here. And I hope I don't butcher this because I did get him out of research and just, like, feel free to, you know, Pepper in anything that I missed their like, any detail that I like. I threw out the window. But so you graduate from the University of South Carolina in 2003 with a bachelor science and marketing managing and a minor and retail, and I I know that you have, like, an impressive track record of look,

you know, account management designed, etcetera, etcetera. And you were working in ministry five years before. You know, the macro problems of the economy and away. And then that's when you started with coma. Are you started? What? Come in 2010 which was an e commerce or for venue? A wall graphics, vinyl world wall, graphics. And then you eventually stop that in 2010 before you took a job at Merrill Lynch, and I read that you were working at Merrill Lynch.

But you know, the corporate culture and really just like them having you grow your beard up, which was like a huge part of your identity and wearing your beard, they couldn't, you know, match that too. The, I guess, the role of becoming a financial advisor. And so you quit. And then you started Beauty brand to unite the subculture of, you know, the urban abuse men that you meant it like these conferences and the rest is history from there. Did I miss a thing?

Well, I mean, yeah, that's that's trunk it in about, you know, 10 years of one cent in about 30 seconds. I would say, You know, I'm a master of failure, failed projects, especially before Beard brand. I welcome O. R. We'll comb. Oh, I I don't even know how you really even pronounce it. It's a made up word that I had for for that vinyl wall graphic business.

It was just one of many projects that I had going on that never took off, and Beard Brand was really the 1st 1 that we found success with. And I mean, it wasn't just the facial hair aspect of working at the giant corporation, but it was, you know, a lot of small things that wanted to play working for the man. And the beard was just kind of one of it where you just you just don't have control over your own destiny and control over the person that you wanted to be. So, especially in those days, those early days, it was really frowned upon to have facial hair. Probably a lot less so today than it was back in 2010. But yeah, that was my journey, man. You described

it. Well, thank you so much. Yeah, I understand that. I think there's some, like compared since the pop culture that you talk about, like, you know, Duck, Dynasty, etcetera, etcetera. So I definitely think there's, like, a growing reverence for beer today, I guess,

Like just pivoting off. Did you ever know that you're going to be with, like, welcome? Oh, did you ever know you were gonna be a founder? Or how did you, I guess, to navigate the path into, you know, starting your own

company. Yeah, I always imagined myself as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, as a founder, I think it was part of my identity. And I remember going all the way back to like, third or fourth grade when I tried to start up a small little business with one of my classmates selling essentially like pixie sticks to our classmates. And that's my first memory of entrepreneurship my grandparent's. They owned a bar and pub in Philadelphia, and I remember going up there and just kind of love. The fact that I mean their own business was their own, you know, like for like, a better terms. And then I had a little bit of more exposure with my dad for a period of time, use an executive recruiter and just kind of did his own thing through his own business,

kind of exchanging his time for money. So I always had influences of entrepreneurship. And really, in those early days from, I would say from really like 2004 until about 2000 well, until Beard brand started 12 4013 I didn't know how to be an entrepreneur. I didn't know what those first steps were I didn't really know what it meant to be an entrepreneur. I thought it was simply you go to the secretary of the state. You file your paperwork, you come up with a name, you buy the domain and all of a sudden you know, you have a business, your business owner and form a lot of my projects just kind of stopped there, you know? It's like, Okay,

Wow, I created my business. I've got my l l c. You know, I'm officially entrepreneur now. And then I realized, like, you know, as those projects failed, I realized that's not what entrepreneurship is about. It's not about the name. It's not about the idea. It's not about, you know, getting the LLC and filing all the paperwork and reporting your taxes to the government. It's something completely

different. Yeah, yeah, I like that. I really like that. I think, like also something feel like at is that a lot of times today lots of people you know by their domain before they really just, like, set up everything. So, like, I feel like it's definitely there's no clear path to like entrepreneurship, I guess will you say entrepreneurship is to you or like you talk about like it being completely different? What would you say? It's like,

Yeah, I mean, the best way for me to sum it up in my years of failure and success is business is simply a series of problems that you need to know howto identifying, prioritize and solve. And then the valuation of your business is essentially all the problems that have been solved by that business. So when you think about entrepreneurship in the early days, probably your number one problem is you have no customers. So until you can solve that problem, you don't move on to anything else. And then once you saw the problem of having customers, typically that opens up new problems like you're running out of stock or well, I mean, that's usually yet. So in those early days, you sell a bunch and then you sell out. So the 1st 1 you've got to figure out is a marketing side of things, and then the 2nd 1 is operations, and I mean, that's all. Business is getting people to know about your business and then serving those people.

I guess this is like more of a personal take. That's not recently that from, you know, eight years of having a beard, you just went and shaved it all off. And, like coming from someone who's, you know, never had really like six or seven hairs on the face of like the beer that I call my beard. What's that transition been like? You're like, How do you like, you know, feeling the cold air on your face again? I guess.

Yeah. I hit a beard for eight years, and I had trimmed it pretty short a couple of times in that journey. But I had never taking a blades who had never gone completely shaven. And this time I took it all the way down, including the mustache, which was a pretty big change for me. And I got to say, like, I prefer having facial hair. I mean, there's a reason that I started this company because I do love having a beard. I do love the feeling of having a beard and shrugging the beard and Karen for a beard or the less maintenance other beard. You know, shaving for me is is not a fun process. It's not something that I want to do. And I recognize that there's some guys out there who love shaving.

That's cool. Like I'm not anti shaving. Yeah, I'm in the process of growing my moustache back out, so we'll be rocking a mustache for a period of time. And then I'm sure shortly thereafter we'll have a beard grown as well.

Thank you. Appreciating And yeah, I just like that analogy of, you know, taking care of it, growing your beard out and like, I hope it isn't too hard of a Segway toe. Like Movinto like Welcome are like, you know, like how you have to take care of your company and, you know, grow it out And, like, I guess, you know, acquire customers and, like,

just treated well, like you treat your beard or your facial hair. So I love to talk about that. Like, how would you describe what welcome it

was? Yeah, So you're welcome. Oh, if you know my history a little bit better, I'm kind of like a self taught graphic designer. I feel very comfortable online. It's a bigger reason that Beard brands been successful because I feel comfortable online. So at the time of walking, though this was probably 8 4009 And creating an e commerce store was really like starting to get easier and easier. This was before Shopify existed, but magenta had just kind of come out, and magenta at the time was like a super innovative platform before magenta was this software called like O s commerce. And pretty much like besides those two options, you had to build your own card, which could be, you know,

$30,000. So I was able to build e commerce store myself and did the website launched and get the products designed and launched and get the manufacturing facilitated all by myself. And that was kind of like cool, you know, like I was able to really get, you know, the foundation of the company off the ground. And I even got a little bit of validation. I had two products that I sold and, you know, like I think a lot of entrepreneurs don't even get that far. They don't even get any products sold. But I think what happened was I wasn't really passionate for the products, you know, they're vinyl wall graphics. They were kind of,

like, these trees and these birds. And, you know, like, if you've run into any, like, middle aged Mom, you've seen them before their thing on every house, every wall. And we had some cool designs, but they weren't really anything innovative to be frank, I didn't have confidence in myself to be ableto grow the company. You know, I didn't have confidence and, you know, getting the word out there and talking about the product and doing all of the things that I needed to do Thio really solve that first problem which was getting your

customers. Yeah, absolutely. And, yeah, I think early congratulations, tree. You know, I guess crossing the chasm of actually selling products to customers because I know you're right where some people don't even know where they operate their businesses for so long. And they don't even get to that fifth where, like, people are, like, able to, like, put their money where their mouth is and really buy their products or congratulations there. But yeah,

a lot too. In fact, I guess I want I'm curious. How did you get into graphic designer like yourself? You know, graphic designer Was this something you know, like the picked up in college. Or did you do this on the cider? Yeah.

I mean, back when I was your age and we wanted to get in a bar, so we needed fake

I d. S. Oh, yeah.

So you just don't find fake ID's anywhere. But we were able to just open up photo shop and, you know, print out some fake I d. S and then laminate, um, and, you know, being a college town in South Carolina, we could just take it to the bar. You know, that was kind of good enough for them back in the day. So, yeah, I got my start making fake I D. S. And then after that,

I was also a pretty avid gamer. I played a lot of half life back in the day, and I was in We would call him clans or just like teams. So I would build like clan forums and Web sites and, you know, just kind of play around with, like, different wallpapers and sprites and stuff like that. I don't really even know. It wasn't, like, ever a conscious decision where I'm like, Okay, I want to be a graphic designer. I'm going to go learn this. It was,

like more of like, Oh, you know, I kind of want to make a fake I d or A. I kind of want to make the small paper. Or, you know, if I guess I need to use photo shop, let's go figure it out. And, man, back in the day, you didn't have any YouTube videos or any kind of tutorials, anything like that. So I remember, Just like the concept of layers is just, like, blew my mind. I'm like, what are these layers

Isn't so weird. Yeah,

you know, you try something and you learn and you do it a really dumb way, And then, you know, someone else points out an easier way of doing it, and then you software gets a little better and get a little better. So I mean, really, like, entrepreneurship is a lot like my story of design is like, if you want to become a good entrepreneur, you just have to do it. And you know, the first stuff that you create and Photoshop is going to be terrible. It's gonna be absolutely horrendous. But, you know,

you get better you try it, you tweak, you learn and the same thing with business like your first year of business is gonna be terrible. You're gonna make so many mistakes, it's going to be awful like. But the thing is like, you just try not to make those mistakes that will put the company out of business. And you just try to make it go further and further and you just solve those problems as they come up and then you're going to get better as an entrepreneur, as a business owner,

Yeah, I just want to touch back on this. I just last aside question, But were these think ideas? Every successful cause I know today are like the landscape today. I have here from, like, also my college friends and, you know Oh, it's gotta swiper. It's gotta, you know, scan if, like people like shine the light through it or something where these, like, you know, these laminated pieces of plastic that you designed and I guess, like adobe something Were they ever successful?

Oh, yeah, man. I mean, I wasn't selling them or anything like that. But in Colombia, like they want your business, they know they're fake I d s. But they have like that. You know, I looked at home and you know, when the cop comes, the cops search is your ball and they find the fake i d. And then you're the student who's on the hook for him. So I remember one time when I went down to this bar, we had this one I d that said the kid was 20 and for whatever reason, my friend thought that would work.

And the bartender's like, No, man, this is 20 every 21 to get it. I'm like, Hold on, let's go back to my room. I want to go print out a fake fore you and then we're going to go back. So he did that. We went and we printed out a fake I d. Really quick went back to the same bar, the same bartender, you know, he had just seen us. He just told us no, but now we had the fake I d. He's a guy. I go in there, so that was kind of like the culture of Colombia and the was at the end of the decade or end of the century and beginning early two thousands. It was just a lot more lax back then.

No. Yeah, absolutely. I think there's definitely not tryingto, you know, inspire any future founders. But I feel like there's definitely American for, you know, college fake ID's or something.

Yeah, I would not. I mean, I know what you know. When I trade money for that cause then it goes from, like, you screwing over yourself to, like, get a felony or something. I don't know the laws. I don't encourage you guys to do illegal.

Yeah, we never talked about this. We never talked about this. Yeah, so, like, that's really cool, you know, just like going from half life spreads, you know, making fake. I've used to going into, like, starting your own business with McComb. Oh, you're welcome. And I really want to know about these.

Like, you know, these two are any stories you can tell about these two products that you sold. You know, what were the prince? How long did you go about? Like, you know, making the prince, and then who bought them where it was? It was like, Ah, family sailor were just like, actual people who are interested

in yourself. S o The nice thing about welcome. Oh, was I was also kind of tied in to the prince scene because my previous job before walking, Mo was working at a small commercial printer. So I had a relationship with this guy who owned a vinyl while our ah vinyl graphic business. So he was willing to cut the products for May. And then I would have, you know, like whatever margins I figured out to be, had to have to look up my old would excel spreadsheets to see what the margins were, but probably like a 50% margin. I would double the price on, and then he would fulfill them, form A so I would send the order to, ah, he would cut him and then he would send him and the 1st 2 orders.

I think we're like family and friends actually think one of the guys, for sure, was 1/2 life buddy of mine, and then I don't know what the other one that was. The other 1 may have been like my own, like, kind of test order or something like that. And then, you know, kind of like the designs I even found like clip art. Essentially is how I started with all the designs. Have found some, like clip art for the trees and then I just affect arise them and packaged up in a unique way and did some, like computer renderings to show what would look on a website. And, you know,

I kind of built out the brand. The logo was this little elephant, and we're selling them. Probably, I don't know. I think was like 50 bucks 50 or 75 bucks, something like that. That was such a long time ago that but But I feel like what really stopped me was like I needed to, like, buy ads, you know, I needed to do Facebook. Facebook didn't really have ads back then, but I need to do like Google AdWords to tryto get some conversions on him. But I just wasn't willing to put money into the business, you know,

because up to this point, everything I did was my time. So I built a website for my time. I created the designs of my time. You know, I ordered, like, one sample from the vendor, but that was like, you know, 30 bucks and then I bought the vinyl as well, and that was like 100 bucks. So I had, like, 100 30 bucks in for my business. And I just wasn't really confident enough in it to spend a few $100 Maur to buy ads and to do proper marketing to get the word

out that this is like super super interesting. Like this is such a great story to tell, I guess. Like, how did you know or like, what were the resource is used to, you know, hospital to get website up or I guess, like, how did you know what Google AdWords was and like Was this like your first ever website? It was just every like everything. First time,

No, Like I had built a bunch of different websites and that, like I had my own personal website and had a couple of fan websites and like, you know, those Klan websites I had stuff like that. So I was really familiar with WordPress. I could build a WORDPRESS website and in no time and then build in magenta. Once. I took a little more learning curve for me at the time, especially magenta was like a freakin resource. Hard, like you would crash crash all the time, so ah, lot of headaches to keep that running. Even when I wasn't doing any volume at all who was crashing, which was kind of crazy, but yeah,

it was just I had the familiarity with hosting how to set up, like, you know, point your d n s. And, you know, to this day that's been pretty pretty beneficial in the e commerce space to be ableto utilize things like Cloudflare to be able to improve the website and course give, like, additional security guys like DDOS attacks and things that will take your upside

down. Yeah, and yeah, I guess something like interesting for me is, like, Why wall prints Did you ever I guess you know the connection to your buddy who had, like, the printing company, But like, it was any other reason, like you put into well, prince, like, did you ever you know, make posters in the past three college? Or did you ever like design anything that was close to like something you'd put up on the wall? No, not

really. Why? Illustrated something A painting? I guess for my wife one time. That's the closest I could have gotten. But it really just came down to the skill sets that I had as an individual with being able to do it all in house. And at the time I think there were a couple of companies out there Blick, I think, like, what is blick dot com or something like that where I kind of was inspired by what they were doing and thought I could kind of do my own version of it, like, different than what they're doing but pretty similar when I look back and it like, my actions were really similar to that of what I think a lot of new entrepreneurs do, and it's the kind of taken idea from someone, and they see someone who's been successful and then they try to do it themselves and they don't really understand the why. Like I didn't really have the Y and and that was probably a big reason that that I didn't have the energy to keep going. There was no why.

It was just like, Oh yeah, I'm gonna be an entrepreneur and people like vinyl wall graphics. I want to make vinyl wall graphics. And so, man, you know, we see this with our company now Beard brand. These people go. I listened to the beard brand Eric Panels podcast, and he's making beer. Doyle. He's making all this money. I'm going to go make beard oil and make all this money and, like they have no care for the product to care for the, you know,

the customer, anything like that. And then they realize it's gonna be really hard and they don't really like it. And, you know, in three months or six months, they get bored of it and they shut it down. And that's essentially what happened in May, And I think, like, what's important? The lesson for me with Wacha Mo was, you know, or at least for me, personally, I know some people are really good at just building a business,

and the product doesn't really matter. But for May, having a connection to that product is super important, and having a connection to that customer is super important. Otherwise, you know, I don't know. You're just spending so much time and energy and effort, like making a difference for things that don't even matter to you, you know, it's I don't know. I think there's more to life

than that. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for saying. I mean, I think it plays around this whole idea of, like, you know, founder market fit. It's like you as, like, I guess, a teenager. I hope, you know, like, selling fake I d.

S air like I mean, like pronouncing ideas and making up, like half life spreads. And then, like, transitioning that intellect, a business where you're making vinyl wall graphics and you don't really have, like, the passion friend. Besides, you know what is black dot com versus, you know, being friend today where you know, you grow your beard working in like, you meet all these other like people, these urban beers men at these conferences.

And they have, like, things that are, like, home to your passions And, like, that's something that you could definitely, I guess continue. Like looking out to do, like, for the rest of your life. Because, like, you just love it as a passion. So, yeah,

I guess the one last thing that I had to ask about welcome it was Do you think there is space for it to exist today. Like I think we talked about it a little bit. And like, what is Blake are like Blake Super Graphics. But do you think, I guess, with such a low barrier to entry and, like people who just like I guess can like Bullock Clipper or, like, you know, teach themselves design graphics. You think it's like a difficult space to break into our like, What do you think? I guess Blake isn't doing that. People who want to do vinyl wall graphics can like break in two. If you can talk

a little bit about that. Yeah, I haven't really followed what Blake is doing lately, but I know when I was startin they had a lot of licensed content. So they're doing like the's Mario Brothers vinyl wall graphics, which I thought were super cool and interesting. Where's my stuff? Was just kind of generic design, so I think there's a saying that I like to repeat. I didn't come up with it, but there's always room at the top. So if what you're building, what you're producing is better than all the alternatives out there, then you're going to find success in the marketplace. So I mean, a perfect example is like Harry's and Dollar Shave Club, right?

They provided a better experience for a better value to their customers and what Gillette was doing. And all of a sudden, you know, Gillette's losing market share left and right. So you know, the shaving industry is a little more. There's a term like blue Ocean and Red Ocean. Pollution means like you know, you're you're growing a new market, and then Red Ocean means market exists, and you're kind of taking market share away from other people. So Harry's is and that that Red Ocean, where they're kind of taken away business from Gillette. But again, there's room there if you're good at what you do and I don't know, I think that's what's great for consumers is always like the options of getting something that may be better than than what they currently

have. Yeah, absolutely. I think it also touches on, like this new movement of, you know, direct to consumer where rather than I think I read an article like a couple of weeks ago where they talked about someone who is looking for, like a mattress or someone who's looking for, you know, like a Gillette razor like they didn't know what the difference between, like the mock Gillette razor verses like the dual Gillette razor. And like a lot of it boils down to like, I guess, like this simplicity and shopping where director consumers websites today like Flourish Because they, you know Harry Zahra Dollar Shave Club produced this like 11 razor for like everything and, like, I think quips doing it with toothbrushes.

Casper's doing it with pillows, etcetera, etcetera. Yeah, I think that's a great Segway into Big Grand. How would you describe

your brand? Your brand is a men's grooming company that is on a mission to make the world a better place by it, empowering men to invest in themselves and to really look at the person in the mirror and love that person. And we do that through our content on our YouTube channel, the beard brand channel, as well as through our products, by making class leading products that they love to use and really helped kind of like the outwardly person look as good as they are on the inside. So we want to help people tell that story.

Yeah, I love that. I love that. Do you have any insight on? You know what products you guys have? Or anyway, like, you know, you can help these men love themselves by, Like, what are you

selling? Yeah. So obviously, with a name like beard brand, we sell beard care products. Yeah, our best sellers. They're gonna be like our beard oil or our utility bomb or a beard washing our beard softener, which are cleansing products. But we've grown beyond the beard, and we now have products for your head hair. So, like your shampoo and conditioner, our sea salt spray, And then we have products that can kind of be used for everything which are going to be our utility bomb, which is all over conditioner. And then our utility bar,

which is all over cleanser. And and you couldn't even use it as a shaved. So we've worked really hard to develop, in our opinion, like some quite innovative products, we kind of have Ah, a mantra here internally, like in going back to like the There's always room at the top. We don't want to make a product that already exists in the marketplace. We only want to make something that exceeds or performs better by our definitions than what customers concurrently get. So we want to make the world a better place with better products rather than try to be everything for everyone and find cheaper ways of making things And, you know, just kind of like, thrown out some junk with with pretty packaging and, you know, just selling the brand. So we care as much about our products as we do. Our brand.

Yeah. Yeah, Absolutely. And it sounds like it. And congratulations. I want to say congratulations last 2080. And you had, like, the target lunch, So yeah, I guess. What was the process of, like going from like, You know, I guess you guys just started like e commerce tower to going, you know, like putting your stuff on shelves was a process of that. And, like, I guess How have you guys celebrated the long

eso we launched early in 2018 with target with our value line, which is our white line. All of our products, the base formulations air essentially the same. We just distinguish them with our fragrances. So our white line has kind of like value price fragrance. Is there going to be a little more common to your nose? Where is our goal line We're using Exotic fragrance is going to be more similar to a cologne like product, but they all perform exactly the same. And for us, that was a really big thing for us to be able to launch in Target and get our product in front of a new audience who maybe doesn't traditionally shop for these products online. We launched in all their stores, which was pretty rad, and we launched with, I think was four or eight years, depending on the store and in the size of the store. So there are styling ball in our utility bomb.

Our beard oil are sea salt spray. Are you're washing beard softener, I believe. Where were the products they carry? Or have at least carried at some point?

Yeah. Congratulations. And I got this air like I just sliced it from the website. But you guys air currently a seven figure company out of Austin, Texas, I guess. Do you have any early customer stories or anything you'd like to share about? You know, your first ever acquisition or like your first ever sail And what that was like And how did you was the growth? Like from, like, you know, year one beer grant like, yeah,

you know, it's funny it before Beard brand tryingto take it. Another company off the ground was called Sovereignty and sovereignty was essentially, like a freelance graphic design business. Build WordPress websites. My very first customer to sovereignty. I was designed in some, like banners or e mails or something like that for this person who found me on I don't know where they found me, maybe read it or found me on the Internet somewhere. Craigslist. Oh, I think they found me on Craigslist or responded to an ad on Craigslist. So they were my first customer for sovereignty. I have no idea who they are. They live in California and that, you know, fast forward,

like a year or two years, and I launched beard brain. I post about it on Facebook and we're connected on Facebook, and they also happen to be our first customer for appeared brain as well. She was buying something for her son, so it was just kind of like, I mean what are the odds that I have two different businesses and the same person was the first customer for both of them, and I have no idea who they are. I've never met him in person. It's not like a family friend were totally bootstrap company. So when your boot strapped, you typically have more time than money. So that meant I was doing a lot of the time intensive things like blogging, interacting on social media, making YouTube videos and trying to get the word out that way. I think we did a lot of case studies on Reddit,

kind of telling how we're building the business and what was working for us and what wasn't working, and that allowed us to to reach a fair amount of people. If my memory's correct, like our first month, I think we did like 900 bucks and then February we did like 1400 box and then March. We ended up doing like 600 bucks, and I thought the business was imploding and crashing and would never sell another thing again. And then in April I think we did like 2000 bucks, and then may we did like 4000 and then June it was like 6000 and then it just, like, is really started snowballing. And I remember in like, maybe like November December. We ended up doing like $75,000 for those months in the first year, which, you know,

I was on Cloud nine, and I think a lot of it was, you know, having the right product at the right time and with the right message to the right people. You know, I think Beer brand was the first company to really take beard seriously. Before that, it was like a joke or, you know, kitschy. I don't know if you remember anyone had in those sunglasses where the mustache would drop down and people give, like, moustache tattoos on their fingers. And it was just kind of a joke. Facial hair was a joke, and we took it serious,

and we told him like they were serious about beards. And we're serious about beard care, and this is how you do it. And this is how you tell your friends and family that you're growing your beard out. And, you know, I think people are really connected with that.

Yeah, absolutely. Congratulations that I would be unclouded had the same, but I'm just curious. How are you guys are? Do you produce your own product or, like, view, you know, go into, like, the chemicals of, like, producing, like, beard oil? Yeah, man, Yeah, You gotta

make your own products or you do just like everyone else out there with the private labelled stuff. So we'll come up with a concept with how we want the product to perform and will typically, you know, do Ah, small batch formulation here in Austin. And then once we kind of dial that down to pretty close to what we want. Then we'll work with our cosmetic chemists, the Dalit in for manufacturing at scale, and then we'll produce it, and then we'll test it. And then if it all goes well, then we to kind of, like, stable of stability tests, change and challenge testing, and then then we'll package it up and and

send it out. Awesome. Awesome. It seems like you just like, you know, in the nitty gritty and everything. I just want to touch back on, you know, you're talking about, like, being everyone else. Um I guess I have, like multiple, like friends who are trying to break into no direct to consumer space, whether it's like, you know, food packaging or like the dynamic,

innovative food are they trying to make. I'm blinking now, but it's like innovative products for hairstyle or like, kind of like grooming. And I guess I kind of like to talk about that where it's like I feel like a little bit of it is like very, very low barrier where it's like you can, I guess, enter the market is like a new solution to like in your example, Like I guess, like helping people grow their beards or helping people maintain their beards. What would you say? Like, Do you encounter these competitors on the daily? And I guess what would you say is the thing that they don't expect coming into the market and then really, just like when they hit the roadblock, they just fall.

Or what do you say? Yeah, what's the largest challenge for, like people who just like I guess, Copy what you

guys do. Yeah, yeah, there is a very low barriers two entry in our space and we knew that, and it was a good thing, you know, because that low barrier to entry allowed us to create our company and start Beard brand. And then, recognizing that there's a low barrier to entry, you really have to focus on the other ways you can bring value to your customers live. So we do that through content, through packaging, through shipping speed through customer service, all these kind of small details that surround our product that you know other people won't be. So I mean, in a sense, like,

yeah, people can rip off her products. But can they rip off our products and are content and our packaging and our customer service and the answer's No, they can't. And we're just gonna, you know, crush him. And maybe if they're going on, ah, value play, you know, they can rip us off, and then they'll sell at a cheaper price point. But then they're not gonna have the customer service. They're not gonna have, you know,

all the education that we've put into the process. So when someone else comes along with a lower price and what they had, then all of a sudden they lost their competitive advantage, and that's just a race to the bottom with no margins. So you're only gonna win that if you could do it at, ah, large scale. And there's also the risk that, you know, maybe this product doesn't have this scale to grow, you know, maybe the market's not big enough to support, you know, low price kind of slim margin type of company. And that's the risk that you gotta take. So I think if anyone's trying to,

like, rip off someone in the space, you really got to think of What are they doing? That's bad. Because if your goal is to come out with the exact same product at a lower price, you're not gonna win, did or do that. You're just gonna get You're just gonna get beat because there are real costs to the product that go into those margins, you know, and they're required to have a sustainable business. So unless you're just sitting on a cash, a lot of money and you just wanna have ah, hobby where you give away or you subsidize products for your customers, you can do that. But you have to do something innovative to be able to be successful at least here in America.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for saying I'll admit that I like you know, I'm a subscriber. It's a beard brand brand. And like I'm in dire need of a haircut, I think I haven't cut my hand maybe like 78 weeks just because college is like beating the life out of me. But I know you know, I'd watch, like hairstyles video of like, I don't know if you're familiar with, like, 360. Jeezy or some fun, but there's like a lot of people who produce, like, hairstyling content and, like I consult very, very deeply with those YouTube videos before I go to my barber and asking what I want. Yeah,

man, we produced a lot of content very similar to 360. Jeezy. And yeah, we help inspire people on Give them like it's really like giving them ammo because so many guys don't know how to talk to their barbers like, I want this haircut and it's kind of like, you know, offended it, but they don't know, like the nuances of the haircut, and then they leave the barbershop all upset because they didn't know how to communicate the haircut or the barber didn't understand what they're asking for. So what a lot of our fans and customers do. So they'll just simply take the video into their barber and will show him is like, This is the haircut I have. This guy looks like me. He's got the same kind of hair type, is me. And I want this haircut and, you know, that's some of the ways that we bring value to our customers.

Yeah, absolutely, you know, And like I guess when the vernacular becomes like, oh, like what number guard do you honor? Like, you know, they're like numbers in it and like I would say, Like I agree where it's like, you know, the barbershops, like a to a relationship where you have to tell him what you want to, like, kill, execute and like, If you don't tell him what you want,

you go out like the barbershop believing really, really said. I've been quote unquote in relationship with my barber, for I've been loyal to him for the past 1.5 years so I can show you that he has my language down Pat. I'm very, very clear that, like there's a lot of other people out there who don't, I guess no hot. A groomer, like, know how to talk to their barber. Yeah. Yeah.

And I mean, to be fair, there's some barbers out there who, you know, maybe they're new. They're learning. They're not able to execute on what the client requests. And, you know, we're kind of getting the Barbara him and I could talk about this for a while. You know, the thing that you'll realize in business is like, you have certain skills, like I'm good at marketing and, you know, storytelling and designs. But I'm really bad at,

like, systems and processes. You know, that's not really my expertise. And the same is true in the world of Barber. And you can have, frankly, like the best person at fades, right? But then you put a pair of scissors in their hands and they clam up on day. Can't do the haircut, you know, So, like, they may be terrible at doing a longer hair cut, but they could do a short haircut amazingly well.

And then you get some people are, like, pretty good at both. And then, you know, like I think being able to understand. You know, like if a barber can say, Hey, man, like I'm really good at fades or I'm really good at this type of haircut. You're gonna look best in this from May, you know, or I don't know, like there's always that balance because you kind of a barber who's willing to do anything but the same time. Ah, Barbara, whose self aware of their abilities and they can convey that to our customers is also beneficial.

Yeah, absolutely. And look, just like the last question like this riding the stains in for a little bit longer, I guess in that topic of, you know, like barbering or like, you know, grooming. And like the beard, brain like entire identity. I guess I'm part of this subset of people who, you know, haven't grown past, You know, six or seven hairs on their until what I call my beard, I guess for people who I feel like,

you know, think they don't need as much grooming is people with, like, lots of facial hair, I guess what? Our habits, our product that you can think over like what you can suggest, too, you know, level upper like bridge The gap between being less and more group.

Yeah. I mean, I think the answer, your question and the beard brain answer is I really don't care how much you group. Frankly, I have no care little now me personally, I found a lot of value and grooming. Like I found that it helps my confidence. I found that the morning routine of, you know, styling my hair, styling my beard, my mustache, and then walking out the door gives me energy. He gives me that cadence I know howto tackle the day, you know, really like a get a ton of confidence from it.

And I would recommend, you know, people explore remain as a way to increase their own confidence and establish those routines which are so important toe having positive daily habits for us and our customers like grooming is that catalyst for a lot of guys like, I will start grooming and then they had that confidence and then with that confidence, will start working out. We'll start communicating to their loved ones in a more positive way. They'll start becoming better team members and employees and bosses, and then, you know, ultimately you know they'll be healthier and happier and they'll live longer lives. But there's other companies, like for some people, that journey starts through exercise, right For some people, it starts through, you know,

their fashion, their clothes. For some people, maybe it's through, like education and learning. There's a lot of ways for you to to develop that confidence. So it really kind of comes in tow, You know, your own personal journey and what you're looking for him. And we like to just kind of be that journey for people and grooming. And then my words out there to anyone it can be men or women is like if you get your grooming down and you get your fitness down, you know, you take care of your body and then you get your style down. You're gonna be like, you know, so much more leveled up than 99% of the people out there like most people,

just they'll have their grooming down, but they don't take care of their body, and they don't have any style where they'll have style. But again, they don't take care of their body where they don't take care of their grooming

perfect. Thank you so much. I hope this isn't too hard of a pivot from like where we were in, like, where we are now, But I guess we talked about it a little bit and, like, you know, being passionate about, like, the things that you're actually doing and not just like, replicating or just like entering a market where there's, like, low barrier and just doing what? Like, I guess, the big name brands,

like just you. But what did you learn from Welcome of that you wanted to part over, you know, any learning that you had from welcome. Always like a first time founder towards, like, your second company or second venture that you, I guess, internalize within yourself to, like, build beard brand to the Brandon was

today. Yeah, and everyone's different. But for me, the biggest failure or the biggest change that resulted in successful beer brand that could have been success with welcome Oh, is frankly, I can't do businesses alone. I'll get in a dark spot, I'll lose my confidence, and I'll pretty much just get bored and I'll move on to some other project. I'm like your typical entrepreneur ideas guy. Michael. That's a cool idea. And then once I get the idea kind of set up, then I like to move on to the next. So by having business partners, they kind of help lift me up when I was feeling down and help make sure that I stayed focus with the vision and what we're trying to do and committed to the things that we said we would commit to and really like,

kick that kind of ideas guy out and turn it into like an execution guy with ideas. And I still struggle with that. I'm still an ideas guy, and I still might get off on, you know, new things. But having a team there has really made a huge difference. So I have two business partners and yeah, without them there would be no beauty. There would be no success at all. So I would say, You know, really, it's find some amazing people who you love working with who are just as passionate and are philosophically aligned and, you know, help them up when they're feeling down, and then they'll help you up

when you're done. Yeah, absolutely. And yet, whether it's like you know fake I d s, I guess Beard oil, anything. Anything, I guess like having co founders is great. Yeah. Thank you for sharing. And I hope this is also, like a hard private. But I heard that you took beard brand. I haven't seen the episode, but you took me a brand to shark thing. What was that experience like?

Like, would you recommend that to you? No other entrepreneurs and yeah, I guess I'd love if you could talk about like what that experience was like. Oh, yeah,

man, Shark tank was great. We're on in 2014. Halloween 2014. If you haven't seen it by now, then I'm going to spoil it for you. But we didn't get any offers, so there's no deal Thio except her turn down. But they were generally pretty positive for me in the company, and they just didn't see the potential of the company, which I think is a fair statement, especially back then in 2014 was still such a new industry. I'd like to say that I've proved them wrong, but yeah, it was a great experience and a great way to get exposure to millions of people who may be interested in your province.

In her company. Yeah, I think you absolutely have proved him wrong. I read an article, but you talked about it, you know, being an emotional roller coaster. And at times I feel like from the shark tank in clothes that I have lost a lot of like very, very promising companies like yourself is like our shot downward. Like they're, I guess, entering a new market or like the sharks. Don't think it's like, Ah, very good investment. But like they put out a video, you know,

five or six years later where it's like, Oh, these are the deals that be regretted on etcetera, etcetera. But like, I guess that all taking that in two like account, would you say that the shark tank experience was worth it? Like, I guess, for you, like mentally And like, I know you got like, a lot of I hope you got a lot of exposure from the project and like people reaching out from like, shark thing. But when you say it was like all worth it for, like a young entrepreneur,

too, I guess, put themselves out there. Unlike that scale of, like, shark tanker like dragons then or something?

Yeah, you know, I'm a youtuber as well. So I've got familiarity being in front of the camera. I've got thick skin From my gaming days, I've heard every slur you could ever imagine thrown my way. So I'm the type of person who I could handle that, you know. And I've got, like, a generally clean past, you know, like I had Don't have any, like, arrests or warrants against me. So I can kind of hold up to the public scrutiny. I think generally Well,

you know, like, for me, I think it was great. You know, I love being on stage. I love being on Been from the camera, my business partners, you know, I've got two of them. They weren't on the show. I think they prefer being more behind the scenes so I can respect people who prefer to kind of step back a little bit. You know, since we're on shark Tank, we had, you know,

a 1,000,000 competitors come into the space, so, you know, you kind of have to be ready to fight the knockoffs and the generics. You just kind of take your idea. And some of them are great business people too. But generally, those type of people are never gonna be as passionate about the product and about what you're building. But you never know. You never know. So there is going to be that risk. If you're not quick enough, t execute on your business, you could lose a marketing opportunities.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you for saying one of the 2020. You know, I guess with a new decade, New Year, what are your plans for a big banner? Like, I guess. What's the future? Can you let us in on, like, some projects, like any, any future product that you think Beard brand could, like, Penetrate that you think are interesting or like, let's see goals for me. But yeah,

I mean, the thing that I've learned over the past seven years, we've just got to get better at the things that we do Well, there's still a lot of opportunity that we haven't captured in our current space, so kind of rolling out some new products in the similar space or just continue in tow, fill out our product offering we put out of Europe last year, and we want to start building the foundation operationally to be able to support a European distribution again. So we're kind of working on that internally. I don't know if we'll be able to do it in 2020 or not, but it will come in the future. And then, you know, just recently, in September of last year, we spun off Are you to channel into two different channels? So I'm pretty excited to continue to grow the new channel and get that content in front of the new audience, as well as growing our existing channel and and hopefully creating some content that people can really engage with and build a connection with with the

brand as well. Yeah, I'm very excited. I don't want to like, harp on it too much like, if you don't want to talk about, it's fun. But is there any reason you pulled out of Europe in the beginning? Yeah,

I mean, it kind of goes to us wanting to deliver an experience that is better than you get from anywhere. And as a small bootstrap company like logistically handling, you know, to fulfillment centers and in the way that we're doing it and the products that we had like we weren't a large enough company to be able to support that we weren't doing that kind of volume, that we could support it in a way that was to our expectations then I know it's kind of like a disappointment of people in the market because they could no longer get our products. But there's just something as a small company with scarce resource is that it's important for us to focus on the things that make the biggest impact to the business and allows the business be sustainable for a long term.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm super excited for beer brand, you know, 2020 2021. And you'll definitely have me as a loyal subscriber. And like, next time I go to Mumbai rolled, I'll definitely show him a video. Yeah, man. And, like, drop some

of our shampoo and conditioner man is the best shampoo and conditioner you've ever used before, So don't be hard by Oh, yeah, yeah. No beard required. If you're a dude, we've got products out there. I know Beard brands in our name, but if you're looking up your grooming game. Look at Beard brand

first. No, no. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm not just saying that constantly. I'm very, very much running out of, you know, shampoo, conditioner, everything. So I won't have to just upgrade to, like, Beard brand everything with or without me and my 67 hairs on my beard. We'll definitely a free state.

All of them. Yeah. Thank you so much. Is there, I guess. Anything you'd like to promote or anything you'd like to use this platform to talk about?

Yeah, man, if you guys want to follow me or interact with me, Twitter is my preferred one. So it's just my last name at band Holtz. And then, of course, beard brand. If you could do yourself a favor and just invest in yourself for a little bit, I'm here to tell you that you're worth it. Beard brand is a great resource for you. We've got all the content information that you'll need as well as the product. Of course. Take care of it. Or if you just want to know if you're an entrepreneur as well. And you want to see how we do it as a company, Go ahead. subscribe to us, get our email newsletters and take our quizzes, things like that. And you can kind of see the beard Brand

experience. Yeah, absolutely. Take it from a subscriber like me to know that Eric has definitely put out some great great content and before I guess, like, I hope this isn't, like, dislike eating into too much time. But you talked about Twitter and, like, I'm a link a tweet below, like like this podcast, or like whatever we upload it. But I have this tweet from you from December 30 fresh. I like just like a couple of days ago where you talk about, you know, 2010 failed business to 11 ticket.

Took a job at Merrill Lynch, etcetera, etcetera like, I think that's I guess it takes a lot of character. Takes a lot of balls, too, you know, put out yourself and like, put out the most public region of yourself in like you've talked about in the past, where you're a very public eye and like you don't want to, like, keep anything to like, personal to yourself. I guess what we say drives you to do that every day and like, I guess, for people who are trying to be more public are people who want to,

like, put themselves out there more. What do you think? Like what is a great research? But how do you think they can? Like, I guess, following your footsteps to, like, get to the level that you are. Yeah,

I love Twitter, and I know a lot of people will rag on it because there's a lot of negativity on there. But if you follow the right people and you get in the right communities, it's really an amazing platform. And I think you know, just before that one tweet you mentioned, I have this other tweet. I'm gonna read it to you for bait him. But it says, If you can look back on old tweets and cringe at the things you've said, then your planet's who's safe and a world of cancel culture. It's scary to possibly say the wrong thing, but I've found that saying the wrong thing and having an open mind is the fastest way to grow. So for me, like being public is really a way to refine and fix ideas I have, like if I have a business idea. I just shared out there with the world and people will be like,

Oh, that's dumber, That's great. And then, based on their responses, I'm able to quickly refine and improve what I'm working on. So just by creating it really allows you to grow so much quicker. And if you're holding everything in and it's going to just take you so much longer to grow, then if you put something out to the world

yeah, I definitely don't think I've treated enough to, you know, Karine Jean. Look back. I only had Twitter for, like, two or three months. But I hope to, you know, one day next year, I guess together like a flashback memory of something that I like. I really, really want to delete it. But yeah, I definitely agree where you're saying, like putting stuff out there like,

just like talking to other people's, like the fastest way to group. And like, I think I love Twitter for that Platform. Two. Yeah. If there's nothing else to cover. Thank you so much for being on the podcast egg. Thank you so much for being my first. So are like, I

don't know what you got for me? A break in your podcast. Virginity. My pleasure.

As you say it instead of me. Yeah. Thank you so much for being on the show. I'll link all of your social zone below. Yeah, thank you so much. And this was the favorite podcast. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Hilary podcast. I've been Brendan Handle Co. And once more I'd like to thank our friends over at referral Hero for making this podcast episode possible. If you're looking to grow your business organically through word of mouth, make sure to check out their tool that allow you to create and grow a referral program within minutes. More than 7000 companies are using it already generating over 30 million leads. And now you can get it to for 20% off with decode fail ary to zero. Try it now for 14 days without any cost at referral.